Hello from Sawsen! :)

Hi all!

I just joined yesterday… this is my story

I’ve been making cakes for fun for years… nothing fancy, mainly cakes with mounds of whipped cream, fruit, chocolate sauce or custard all over them… not the sugar-coated art I see on your site (actually I’ve only ever really used fondant 2 or 3 times to date) but the type you might see in a bakery, the ones that scream “EAT ME!!” and make you forget all about your diet. I’d do this for family, for friends or for my local community centre whenever there was a bake sale or event. but mostly because I liked cake. Cake 4EVER!! :D

All that changed about a year and a half ago when my sister got engaged. Although I was working pretty much full time, in the space of a few months I made 2 engagement cakes then a simple 3-tier fondant number with pillars and fresh flowers. For the first time in my life I had to make something of that quality, never having been taught or taken any online classes, and more importantly never having done it before. I guess it went pretty well given my inexperience, the cakes looked beautiful but they took me hours (houuuurrsss) and I spent up into the small hours of the night for days running just to get them done, the kitchen looked like a disaster zone and I was close to tears many times… not least at the thought of having to go to work the next day. I made IMBC for the first time for one of the engagement cakes and spent about 6 hours doing that, then another I don’t know how many hours just trying to get smooth sides and sharp edges on a cake. I’d also never levelled or dowelled anything before and the tiered cake was at a dangerous tilt when I first stacked it lol so I had to take it apart and correct that. Luckily no disasters though. And everyone was so complimentary, I had confidence my cakes would taste nice because that’s the only thing I cared about until that point, but it was a surprise when my new brother-in-law suggested I could make a living making them.

But, I was working already, as a scientist in a hospital. Cakes for me were a hobby, and after being thrown in at the deep end I needed a good few months not baking anything to recover haha. I made a few more nice cakes for my own engagement after that, but then nothing really for a long time.

In August of last year I was diagnosed with a fairly serious health problem that meant I had to take an extended period off work. For the first few months I was so knocked out from the illness that I don’t think I even turned the oven on. But you know they say such things can be a blessing in disguise – I really think this is true because for the first time in my life I had time to myself, to look inside myself and find out who I am and what I love doing. I found I was increasingly trawling the web for pictures of beautiful cakes, and ordering more and more cake decorating items online. I found all sorts of gadgets and proper tools that could give great results in a fraction of the time compared to what I had done previously, by trying to improvise and use my mum’s old dented mismatched cake pans or plastic icing plunger from the pound shop with a few nozzles missing. I wasn’t using them yet, but I was building a lovely little collection. And whats more, for the first time in my life I managed to feel like I could buy these things without feeling guilty – that it was OK to collect cake things because it was something I loved, and because I deserve to have them. That’s another blessing of being ill – I had the chance to grow. A lot.

Fast forward to May of this year, and one of my best friends is getting married. She asked me to make her wedding cake, although I really hadn’t baked anything much in the past year. She trusted me anyway, for which I’m permanently indebted to her. I nearly fell off my chair when she told me what she wanted – a cake that would feed around 400 guests in white chocolate, with red roses, one that was decorated to match the beadwork on her Asian/Indian bridal dress… one I would also need to transport and set up…It would end up being 9 tiers, the biggest thing I’d ever (everrrr) done XD (in fact I posted it as my first cake on this site if you’d like to see it, and on a crazy whim I think I’m going to enter it in the wedding cake competition… not because I believe I might actually come close to winning I hasten to add, but because this cake means so much to me, and was truly beyond the best I could ever do at the time I was making it). She insisted on paying for the materials, but I made the cake for her as an expression of my love for her as a dear friend. In every plan I made I tried to connect with that deep part inside myself where creativity comes from, and try to be as present, aware and true to that as possible. It was almost a spiritual experience lol, to which I owe my success as I’d never made anything that big or covered in chocolate before, and I had more than a couple of disasters but managed not to freak out when I had to redo 2 tiers at the last minute. But no matter how long I spent on them, how broken my back felt and how it hurt in places I didn’t know I had, I felt happy. For the first time I could remember, I felt truly content. I though to myself, I think I may have found my calling :)

I’m not a professional – but I’m hoping to get there. I’m taking on more projects, trying to build my skill. I’m forever indebted to the amazing, generous cakers out there who share their work and write tutorials and make videos on youtube who have served as my inspiration and my teachers. I hope one day I can make something which might not look out of place beside their masterpieces and works of art.

So, that’s what brings me here. Wish me luck! :)